When a vehicle equipped with a car navigation system travels along a road which does not exist in map information held by the car navigation system, the car navigation system detects the unregistered road by comparing the travel history of the vehicle with the map information held thereby, and carries out an update of the map information held thereby with addition of the unregistered road.
For example, a technology of, when detecting a new road (referred to as an unregistered road) whose information is not included in the map information on the basis of the traveling path of the vehicle, carrying out an update with addition of the unregistered road, as well as addition of restrictions on the road or attendant information about the road, like the width of the road, on the basis of the traveling path corresponding to the unregistered road is known (for example, refer to patent reference 1).
[Patent reference 1] JP, 2005-172578, A
The technology disclosed by above-mentioned patent reference 1 makes it possible for the user to receive a service based on the newest map information without having to acquire the new map information. This technology provides the user with a large profit because the cost of acquiring the new map information is expensive and the amount of the map information is huge.
However, in many cases, the map information is stored with being separated into a plurality of layers according to the degree of detail of the stored data. In contrast with this, patent reference 1 discloses only the technology about detection of an unregistered road and settings of attendant information, and therefore cannot carry out navigation while reflecting a detected unregistered road in the plurality of layers (carrying out an update with addition of the unregistered road to the plurality of layers).
The present invention is made in order to solve the above-mentioned problem, and it is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a map information processing apparatus which, when adding, as additional map information, an unregistered road which has been detected during travel of a vehicle and whose information is not included in map information stored therein to update this map information, determines layers which are to be updated with the addition according to the state of the unregistered road and the user's intention so as to enable navigation using the unregistered road, such as a display of a wide-area map and a determination of a long distance route.